Page:New observations on inoculation - Angelo Gatti.djvu/6

iv, he was invited over to the court of France. The minister thought him a proper person to establish the practice in that kingdom; and the inhabitants were supposed inclined to receive it from any quarter rather than from a nation at that time engaged in war with them.

Our Italian physician had, like his countryman Pylarini, learned the art of inoculating in the Levant. There he had seen the operation in its primitive dress, performed by Greek women, and recommended by Greek priests. The hand of surgeons was unemployed, the pen of physicians not desired. A needle was the sole instrument; a little matter imbibed in cotton, or dried in powder, the only apparatus. No accidents were known to happen; no troublesome ulcer or disorder to succeed. A gentle fever, during four-and-twenty-hours, was the only symptom; and a small crop of pustules, chiefly upon the part where the pock was rubbed in, without ruffling, lowering, or endangering the patient, secured his life, his organs, and his features.

To great sagacity my friend joined an open and beneficent mind. What he had seen, he proclaimed every where. He was in hopes that a people equally fond of novelty and ease, would readily adopt this new and elegant mode. The great, and especially their leaders, the ladies, he imagined, would be allured by being put to no fright and no pain, Rh